Anthology of World Music: The Music of Laos

This is another stellar Rounder Records release, from 1999, of the fantastic series of fifty world music recordings overseen by Alain Danielou and produced by the International Institute for Traditional Music between 1968 and 1987.

The recordings are from Radio Vientiane, the Vientiane School of Music, the Palace Orchestra at Luang Prabhang and a village recording.  The mouth organ, percussive instruments of various types (gongs, kettledrums, and others), and vocals evoke the rich history of music in the land-locked nation between Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and China.

Danielou's notes give a good general background of musical traditions in the nation and explains the connection of indgenous developments with influences from China and India.  The variation in large ensemble pieces (including an excellent one drawing on the Hindu masterpiece, the Ramayana) and solo and smaller group works is notable, as well.

Rounder deserves much praise for reissuing the Danielou records on disc and having about a dozen or so of these from various parts of the world, I'm looking forward to getting as close to completing the set as possible.

Richard H. Kirk: Dasein

Released at the end of June 2017 through his Intone Productions label, Dasein is a great Richard H. Kirk album in many ways.  Recorded at intervals over a three-year period from late 2012 to late 2015, while Kirk worked on other projects, it reintroduces voice (albeit heavily treated samples of his vocalizing) and, especially, guitar, which has not been heard on any of his recordings for a long time.  These add a level of depth and richness to the music and are welcome reintroductions to his work..

The pieces are uniformly excellent, filled with the dub-influenced electronic melange that Kirk has mastered over many decades.  The titles hint at some of his usual concerns, including "Nuclear Cloud," "Radioactive Water," "Invasion Pretext," and "Sub/Antarctic/H2O," the latter appearing to have some reference to climate change (maybe).

This is a strong release from someone whose electronic music has been challenging and invigorating this listener for over thirty years and is an indication that the creative spirit is far from diminishing in Kirk's monumental body of work. 

As a sidenote, just having finished the often-difficult reading of an anthology of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, a core concern of his was the nature of dasein, or being.  So, it seemed quite a coincidence that I bought the CD last year and then followed up, unintentionally, with the purchase of the Heidegger anthology.

Winged Serpents: Six Encomiums for Cecil Taylor

I was on vacation on the central California coast, blissfully tuned out from the news that, these last couple of years, have been invariably draining and maddening.  So, it was surprising and saddening to find out a while after returning that the peerless Cecil Taylor, one of my favorite musicians of all, died on 5 April, not long after his 89th birthday.

There are dozens of Taylor recordings that could be highlighted here, but the striking tribute album (and these are not always what they're intended to be) quickly assembled, produced, and released by the unfathomably productive John Zorn for his Tzadik label is an outstanding one.  As the OBI strip notes, "Cecil Taylor was a powerful and unforgettable musical force—a fearless visionary and one of the greatest musicians of the past century.  His visceral and intense performances influenced generations of musicians, artists, poets, filmmakers, and creative minds of every description."

The pieces here are definitely influenced by, but not imitative of, this astounding pianist, whose music will always be a regular part of the playlist.  They reflect respect for Taylor while expressing the "heartfelt tributes" Zorn intended for the musicians to develop.  Craig Taborn, Sylvie Courvoisier, Brian Marsella, Kris Davis, Aruán Ortiz and Anthony Coleman all bring remarkable works, beautifully played and recorded with crystalline fidelity, that are really a pleasure to listen to.

A poem, also in a Taylor influenced style, by Charles Bernstein and Zorn's impressionistic album art in ink, gold and, yes, blood are also tributes.  The poem and a portion of the artwork are shown here as indications of how carefully and creatively Zorn and the others expressed their debt to the magic produced by a musician (magus?) rightly described as "this legendary genius who created a new music that transcended all genius."

Elliott Carter: 16 Compositions (2002-2009)

I finished recently a book on the music of the astounding Elliott Carter, whose work continues to amaze because of its complexity, richness, and wide range of expression.  The book was often a tough slog when it came to intricate and rigorous technical explanations of the construction of pieces and the often intimidating terminologies employed in musicology.  Still, what did come through for a total amateur was Carter's innovations in harmony, time and other structural elements, and most especially in his use of rhythm.

The book definitely made listening to Carter's work more worthwhile in trying to pick out where the composer employed his creativity and innovation.  An example of this is with 16 Compositions (2002-2009), another excellent issue in a series by Bridge Records, which produces great recordings by modern composers.  The 2010 double-disc surveys a wide range of symphonic, ensemble, solo and choral works in a period in which the composer was in his mid-90s to early 100s.

That's one of the many remarkable aspects about Carter in that he was very active making amazing music at a very advanced stage in life and doing so with all the exploratory creativity he displayed throughout his career.  In fact, he finished his last piece just three months before he died in late 2012, a few weeks shy of his 104th birthday.  So, this survey has a lot to enjoy, often in brief pieces, and featuring typically unusual instrumentation, like solo works for marimba and bassoon, along with more standard large and small group and solo types.

Reboot with G.S. Sachdev: Live in Concert

This stunning live performance by the amazing bansuri player, G.S. Sachdev, is particularly noteworthy, given that Sachdev died this past June in San Rafael, north of San Francisco.  Issued by Lyrichord, a producer of many fine "world music" recordings, the album is 78 minutes of five performances, ranging from seven to thirty-one minutes of the master, accompanied by Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla and Elb Sounders on tambura (which provides a steady drone), displaying his remarkable talent.  Unfortunately, it is not stated when and where the album was recorded.

As Sachdev wrote in the liner notes, ragas are traditionally performed at a set time of day to evoke the feelings and atmosphere of that part of the day, though he also noted "when we close our eyes, we lose our sense of time," so that an early morning raga can be performed in the late evening.

This is a more introspective and quieter concert of ragas than would be associated with, say, Ali Akbar Khan on the sarod and Ravi Shankar with his sitar, where the slow buildup to an extraordinarily fast and powerful finish was standard.  Sachdev's music is, as the notes indicate, created "to develop the raga in a calm and methodical way" and he observed that "the artist needs a sympathetic approach from the listeners" because "music starts with the artist but is completed by the audience" and "there is no separation between the two."  Listening to this great album with these thoughts in mind helps make the experience even more meaningful and entertaining.

Reboot with Pete Namlook/Bill Laswell's Outland

This 1994 collaboration between the late German electronic musician Pete Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann) and the prolific bassist and producer Bill Laswell is a trip deep into ambient sound and the first of five editions in the Outland series with the pair also producing five albums under the Psychonavigation moniker.  They also worked with Klaus Schulze on a few editions of the Dark Side of the Moog series--all for Namlook's amazing FAX Records series.

It begins with an eerie sound source of Mongolian tuva singers and instrumentation and then dissolves into a low, quiet drone.  Excepting some variation in rhythm and tones and a bit of manipulation of Laswell's bass, the 62-minute piece is an exercise in deep, dark ambience.

Outland reminds me a lot of the work of another Laswell collaborator, Mick Harris, and his Lull project, which is actually darker than this.  I'm a big fan of the Lull series of recordings, so this album is also a favorite.  I've found it to be a good recording to have on while working at the computer or in the yard (even better with headphones) or on a longer commute in the car.

Reboot with Herbie Nichols: Four Classic Albums

The reboot continues with this double-disc British compilation of four albums recorded from 1955 to 1957 from the tragically underrecorded and underappreciated pianist Herbie Nichols.  I'd only heard of him because I'd read A.B. Spellman's Black Music: Four Lives and learned a little about this amazing musician and composer who died in 1963 at age 44.

This recording captures the creativity of his writing and the stunning technique and unusual structure of his piano playing.  Critic Leonard Feather wrote in the liners to the combined volumes of The Prophetic Herbie Nichols that "his technique made [Vladimir] Horowitz and [Art] Tatum seem like bumbing amateurs," which is leaning way too far in trying to get Nichols his due.  But, Nichols was a fantastic stylist and it is clear that the trio was the way to make the most of it.

There are stellar sidemen here, including Art Blakey, Max Roach, George Duvivier, Al McKibbon and Danny Richmond and the far-sighted Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records deserves accolades aplenty for recording Nichols when no one else cared.  Unfortunately, he died young and all but ignored, but these recordings are a testament to the phenomenal talent of Herbie Nichols.

Reboot with Franz Liszt: A Faust Symphony

Time for a reboot, which means even less commentary but at least some favorites still get posted for those who might be interested.

Today, we retool this blog with Franz Liszt's A Faust Symphony.  I've read that Liszt's skills as a composer are not as highly regarded as his contemporaries, though he was a dynamic and dramatic virtuoso pianist who set hearts (especially female ones) swooning on his many tours of Europe in his younger years.

Yet, his "symphonic poems," when the mood is there, can be fascinating excursions into literature, history, characterization and dramatic symphonic expression.  The notes to this Naxos release include a negative critique from Edouard Hanslick, a prominent music critic, who complained about Liszt's "fiddling and blowing" in an attempt to make his work sound profound.

Having read Göethe's Faust a quarter century ago, but remembering the feelings evoked by that romantic work, the drama of bombast alternating with meditative passages in A Faust Symphony is a powerful musical representation of the tragic Faust and his selling of his soul to Mephistopheles (a.k.a., the Devil.)  The Orchestra of the Ferenc (Franz in Hungarian) Liszt Academy, conducted by András Ligeti, and the Hungarian State Choir perform beautifully.

When in the mood, Liszt's symphonic poems can be very enjoyable and this is an example.